Despite grandiloquent claims about changing education—or the world—today's most popular online courses largely reinforce the status quo of higher education.

This isn't to say that online courses aren't useful for many learners. As I have stressed in my reviews of edX, Coursera, Khan Academy, Udemy, and Udacity, online courses provide the tools with which adult learners, particularly tech-savvy self-starters, can pursue continuing education at little or no cost. However, I also notice a discomforting disconnect between platforms' democratic mantras and their course catalogs.

Emphasis on the "MO"When I say "online courses," I'm really speaking about "massive open online courses," or MOOCs for short. MOOCs invite unlimited participation over the Web. That open invitation sounds great—it means that all sorts of non-traditional students with different perspectives can participate—but it also means that instructors can take few competencies for granted. In an ideal scenario, students would support one another through well-regulated discussion forums. In reality, they get discouraged and drop out. A recent study from the Community College Research Center found that "online courses may exacerbate already persistent achievement gaps between student subgroups," a point underscored by eyebrow-raising attrition rates.

Because of the scale of courses, there's also little structural variation. Learners can expect discussion forums; machine-graded multiple-choice assessments; self- and peer-assessments; and video lectures. I alternatively found myself bored during lectures (I suffered lecture fatigue during a Coursera class), disappointed with peer feedback (I received numeric scores with monosyllabic comments in an edX class), and downright lonely on discussion forums (some Udemy classes had literally no threads). Certainly, some courses make better use of core components. Thanks to an open framework and massive bank of automated and continuous assessments, Khan Academy actually required some note-taking, and a timed class on Coursera cultivated lively discussions by requiring both students and administrators to post regularly.

Top-Tier or Top-DownCreating and maintaining a MOOC takes a village—and well-heeled one. From my conversations with faculty who developed online courses for edX and Coursera, I came to understand that an educator couldn't possibly build an online course without tenure and voluminous institutional support. For example, the aforementioned Coursera class lists 21 contributors, including two pedagogical assistants, two producers, and a copyright consultant, under its course credits. The professor estimated that she spent hundreds of hours developing her first course, and still more time revising it for later iterations. It's no wonder that large, established institutions dominate the catalogs of edX and Coursera.

Other platforms take a top-down approach. Sal Khan lectures on everything from the Electoral College to Organic Chemistry, a boon if you enjoy his conversational tone, but less so for critics of his pedagogy of math, and other subjects. Udacity, meanwhile, has partnered with huge corporations such as AT&T and Google to create Nanodegrees, programs through which employees accumulate skills and credentials to, in their words, "level-up" careers. The rub is that we don't know what careers await Nanodegree graduates, or whether these degrees are simply paths to competitive internships.

Udemy is the only platform I have encountered that challenges this paradigm by allowing anyone to create courses. However, its approach is at once logistically and philosophically limited. Course modules are spartan—there isn't even one for peer review—and the company appears more focused on selling courses than vetting content. During a two-day review period, Udemy commits to checking courses using 20 standards, only one of which vets content ("Instructor Delivery").

What Makes a World-Class Education?In mission statements, each platform describes its education with the usual degree of modesty: "highest quality," "world-class," "world's best." Perhaps I hold outsized expectations, but I don't associate YouTube micro-lectures or multiple-choice tests with world-class education. It's wonderful that these resources are available online, and generally at no cost to students. But we should hold these platforms to their own benchmarks. What does a work-class education look like? What should a world-class education look like?

As a student, educator, and technologist, I want to embrace online education. I'm excited about the possibilities of "blended" or "hybrid" learning, which by many accounts, improve learning outcomes. Today's most popular MOOCs have yet to disrupt the status quo, but they can by creating flexible, open platforms for experimentation, collaboration, and, perhaps most importantly, play.

About the Author

As a contributing editor, William Fenton specializes in research and education software. In addition to his role at PCMag.com, William is also a Teaching Fellow and Director of the Writing Center at Fordham University Lincoln Center. To learn more about his research interests, visit his homepage or follow him on Academia.edu, LinkedIn, and Twitter.

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